Dallas, Texas
Mark Melton
Attorney. Advocate. Author.
A partner at Holland & Knight, founder of the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, and author of Injustice of the Peace — forthcoming from Deep Vellum in March 2027.
Attorney. Advocate. Author.
A partner at Holland & Knight, founder of the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, and author of Injustice of the Peace — forthcoming from Deep Vellum in March 2027.
I'm a corporate tax attorney by trade and a partner at Holland & Knight, where I co-lead the firm's tax practice. By night, and by most weekends, I run the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, the nonprofit law firm I founded during the COVID-19 pandemic to defend tenants facing eviction in Dallas County. We are the only organization in the country to have achieved full courtroom saturation in eviction defense.
I came to this work the hard way. In 1999, at twenty-one years old, I lost my job, my home, and most of what I owned. I drove my wife and two young children to Dallas in a Honda Civic with whatever fit in the trunk. I rebuilt over the next two decades through community college, undergraduate and graduate school, law school, and a career that eventually landed me at one of the country's largest law firms. I remember every part of the climb. I remember the parts of it I couldn't have done without help.
The Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center exists because of that memory. The book exists because what I've seen in eviction courts over the past five years deserves to be on the record. I live in Dallas with my wife Lauren and our dog DEACon, an eighty-pound rescue who supervises my afternoons.
Power, Poverty, and America's Eviction Courts. Published by Deep Vellum, March 2027.
From the courtrooms of the wealthy and powerful to the living rooms of the impoverished and forgotten, Injustice of the Peace tells the story of poverty in America through the lens of a legal system that has become more of a tool of the wealthy than a bastion of truth and justice.
Told through first-hand accounts of Dallas residents — from single mothers working tirelessly to make ends meet, to elderly couples living in units with no reliable electricity or hot water, to entire communities haunted by histories of redlining and illegal repossession — Injustice of the Peace is a deeply moving, accessible roadmap to America's housing crisis and a rallying cry for a more compassionate, humane future.
Visit the book site →DEAC is the only organization in the country that puts free legal representation in every eviction court, every day, for every tenant who walks through the door.
I founded DEAC in 2020 with my wife Lauren after a single Facebook post during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. What started as a small group of volunteer attorneys answering panicked phone calls became a full-time legal aid organization with paid staff representing thousands of tenants every year. In April 2025, we achieved what we call saturation theory — a defense lawyer for every tenant in every eviction court in Dallas County, every single day. We are now expanding to Houston.
For book press, speaking inquiries, legal aid coordination, or anything else.